


A smiling future

by transxander



Series: Ferdibert Week 2019 [4]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-04
Updated: 2019-12-04
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21674635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transxander/pseuds/transxander
Summary: Would it not be horrible, he'd said, if war were to plague these lands?Hubert spat out his coffee.[prompt: soulmates]
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir & Edelgard von Hresvelg, Ferdinand von Aegir & Petra Macneary, Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Series: Ferdibert Week 2019 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1559263
Comments: 1
Kudos: 146





	A smiling future

**Author's Note:**

> i finished writing this in two hours its messy nksljvjdkosjdkl. hope you guys enjoy!!

"Mother?"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"What did you know about your soulmate?"

She smiled. "I knew their favourite colour, and the name of their dog. A wonderful dog, that, too."

"Did you ever... see things? Like, like memories, or things that- that had yet to happen?"

A pause. "No. Never."

When his father heard, he locked him in his room while he gathered the finest doctors the Empire had to offer. They said it was the imagination of a child, nothing more. 

Ferdinand never spoke of those things again.

  
  


What little he saw was often confusing, but one time, he woke up in the middle of the night with only one thought on his mind: Edelgard was in danger. He'd met her before, though briefly, for his father insisted he rather speak with her elder siblings. And so, with all the courage a twelve-year-old could feasibly muster, he made his way to the stables in the dead of night, determined to ride to the Imperial Palace. As he was preparing Princess, though, his father, alarmed by a guard who had passed by and seen him, dragged him back inside.

Once more, he was locked away as an entire flock of doctors looked him over, and once more, they all blamed it on his overactive imagination. 

When he next saw Edelgard, her hair had turned white as snow, and all her siblings had mysteriously passed away. His father said he had to befriend her, now, but whenever he looked her in the eye, all he could think of was the blood.

He spent that night locked in his room by his own volition. No one would see him cry.

  
  


He still hadn't found out who his soulmate was, or why he kept seeing things he could not possibly see, by the time he enrolled in the Officer's Academy. His father assured him he would not have to come home with anything less than perfect grades or attendance, but he, a purely egoistical thing of him to think, he wanted to do his best for himself, so he might become strong enough to help Edelgard. Despite her bodyguard's (the von Vestra son, he knows, who is like a snake without the brain) dislike of him, the two of them grew closer quickly. 

On a particularly sunny afternoon, they escaped Hubert's prying gaze to hold a picnic in the vast fields surrounding the monastery. He brought sandwiches and tea; she brought a blanket and a bright smile he could not have imagined at twelve years, nor one that he had seen recently. She has been under a lot of stress, she told him. Naturally, he'd replied, it was the final school year.

She had looked at him with an unreadable expression on her face, before nodding, too slowly.

It was the final school year.

The visions started not long after that.

He felt twelve again, with how he shot awake one night, images of blood spilt across grass and mud fresh on his mind, yet these did not tell the story of one little girl, alone in the world, he could tell. He refused to think about it, almost, as if he would be speaking it into reality.

These dreams reeked of war.

He brought the topic up with Edelgard once, at lunch with Hubert. Would it not be horrible, he'd said, if war were to plague these lands?

Hubert spat out his coffee. 

Edelgard looked at him, like she was sizing him up. He did not think she had ever done that. When she spoke, it was tentative, careful of revealing too much.

Quite.

  
  


He wished he could say he was surprised when the Flame Emperor took off their helmet to reveal hair still as white as freshly fallen snow. Clearly, whatever she had seen in him, it was not enough.

He wondered if he would ever be enough.

Yet then, their professor stepped forward. He saw their bright face amidst a sea of soldiers, for only a moment, and he knew his choice had already been made. It was no longer the matter of following his father, of following Edelgard, of following his mysterious soulmate. The professor would be the one to follow. The professor would lead them to peace.

  
  


The professor led themself off the edge of a cliff.

His tent door could not be locked. Petra consoled him, before they fell asleep in each other's arms. 

  
  


The next five years were a blur. His father locked away, the professor lost, Edelgard unreachable, he had no one to turn to. Prime Minister was no job for a man barely twenty. 

  
  


He spent more time with Hubert. They discussed proposals and treaties, morale and trade routes, sometimes even over tea (though Hubert refused to drink anything but that dreadful coffee of his). 

Offhandedly, he had mentioned there was no tea he enjoyed quite like the one Almyrans made out of pine trees.

Next week, Hubert presented him with an entire shipment of it.

He told Hubert of the marvellous horses bred by Count Gloucester.

In only a month, a Gloucester foal nibbled on her hay in the Imperial stables of Enbarr.

Ferdinand, in turn, trained her to be Hubert's magehorse. His gift was repaid.

  
  


Hubert was the first person he could think to run to when he had seen the impossible. The professor would be back.

Hubert invited him into his room, even though it was the middle of the night, and he must have sounded insane.

  
  


What should have been the Millennium Festival arrived, and with it, the professor. There was something poetic to be found in using the old monastery as the base for their new strike force, he figured, but he could not tell what. The crumbling walls only reminded him of the bloodied faces of former friends and students he kept seeing in his dreams.

  
  


He did not even know if the Goddess existed, yet the cathedral, broken and rundown as it was, became a safe haven for him. He spent many a sleepless night there, begging an entity he could not see or hear to spare them all the future he had seen. 

Only silence and the gentle moonlight answered him.

  
  


Hubert took him to the gazebo, with her roses regrown. They drank Almyran tea in the sun. He'd joked Hubert should be careful, or he might burn.

Never before had he heard such a vulnerably honest voice.

"There is nothing I would not do if it meant I could bask in your presence a moment longer."

  
  


His dreams wake him one last time. This time, they are not filled with bloodshed, the metallic clang of weapon against weapon, the fog of war.

He turns to Hubert's sleeping form. The worry lines in his forehead have smoothed out, the stress gone from his shoulders as he holds him close.

A bright future. That is all.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!


End file.
